


Reason, Free from Passion

by HawkMoth



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, Fix-It, Gen, Movie/Brick Fusion, Playing fast and loose with Movie/Brick canon!, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 12:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HawkMoth/pseuds/HawkMoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The law is reason, free from passion." -- Aristotle</p>
<p>"The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking." -- Stanley Kunitz</p>
<p>There can be ghosts among the living. Also, M. Hugo never met a coincidence he didn't like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reason, Free from Passion

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline of events in the 2012 movie is problematic. I have only read bits of the Brick. So this might be considered crack. Also, I have no idea if this particular fix has been attempted before.

_There is nowhere I can turn._  
  
Oblivion waited.  
  
It would take just one step, one movement to fall. Then it would all be over; the choice taken from him. No more questions or doubt, no more guilt or pain.  
  
He thought briefly that he might leave some sort of testament, to put on paper suggestions he had mulled over through the years, ways to improve policing and the upholding of the law. But who would follow the suggestions of a man who had abandoned the law so utterly?  
  
No, it would not do. Let his superiors and his fellow officers think him of what they would. It wouldn't matter. He had but one thought now--escape. There was nothing left but to take that one step off the parapet...  
  
Then there was a sound in the darkness, barely heard over the angry roar of the river below and the pounding of his heart. Soft footsteps and a small voice--  
  
"Monsieur?" It was the voice of a child.  
  
The surprise of it twisted Javert sideways, not forward. Somehow he kept his balance, and peered into the shadows at the far end of the bridge. He had been certain the area was empty and deserted, but now he saw two tiny figures, emerging from the dark like wisps of fog, just visible in the moonlight filtering through the clouds.  
  
Two small boys, pale and slight, in clothes going ragged, clutching each other by the hand. Gamins, children of the street, like hundreds of others Javert had seen over the years in Paris. But like all wild creatures, they usually had their bolt holes for the night--doorways, alleys, any nook or cranny where they could hide. To see this pair wandering the riverside in the black hours was an anomaly, an aberration.  
  
Wrongness needed correction. Instinct kicked in and Javert stepped down to the pavement. He fought to steady his reeling thoughts as he carefully approached them. They watched him, eyes huge in their tiny, pinched faces. The mark of hunger, of deprivation.  
  
 _My sister's child was close to death. We were starving._  
  
Javert tossed his head, to throw off the sudden memory of that defiant voice. The children, one scarcely taller than the other, still stared at him, silent now, but with an air of desperate expectation.  
  
He struggled to find words. "What are you doing here?" he finally managed. "Have you nowhere to go?" And the next question was out of his mouth before he realized the futility of it. "Where are your parents?"  
  
The little one's eyes grew even larger, if that was possible, and Javert could just see the glint of tears starting. The older boy's lips quivered, but his voice was clear when he spoke. "Mama is gone. We could not find her, and now we are lost."  
  
No mention of a father. Had they been orphaned in the epidemic, or had their mother somehow been caught up in the violence of the uprising? "And how long have you been lost?" he asked. Interrogation kept him focused, although something still writhed inside him, calling him back to the parapet. "A day? A week?"  
  
There was no comprehension on their faces. "A long time, M'sieur," the older one finally said. "There was a big boy, and he took us to the elephant, but then he was gone and we were lost again."  
  
Now it was Javert's turn to stare. That crumbling monument to the old regime in the Place De La Bastille? The haunt of the urchins, the very home, it was rumored, of the ones who ran rampant in the St. Michel slums.  
  
He took one uncertain step forward, the better to see the pair before him. Something in their faces was strangely familiar. Then memory suddenly seized him, of the fateful afternoon in the Rue De La Chanvrerie, of the horrific aftermath of the rebellion. The street boy sullen and defiant in the street outside the Gorbeau tenement; smug and contemptuous at the barricade.  
  
 _I know this man, my friends._  
  
The boy Gavroche, laid out with the rest of the fallen rebels in the ruins of the Cafe Musain.  
  
Javert reeled back. No, it could not be...but the resemblance was all too clear. Not just to Gavroche, either. Bits of information surfaced in his mind from various dossiers compiled over the years.  
  
The villain Thenardier, also known as Jondrette. His equally criminal wife, running their cons alongside a band of cut-purses and thugs. There were at least two nearly-grown daughters, who acted as lookouts and snitches for the gang. Supposedly there was also a young son--some said it was the very same Petit-Gavroche, turned out at a tender age to fend for himself on streets.  
  
But there were rumors of two other boys, scarcely out of babyhood when they were sold off by their depraved parents to someone's widow or mistress in need of dependents to claim a stipend.  
  
It would not be unlikely that these two before him were those pitiful castoffs. Anything was possible in the underbelly of the city, in this world turned upside down, where Fate played cruel tricks on the worthy and unworthy alike.  
  
A sudden weakness overcame Javert, and he sank to his knees, his thoughts disordered anew. The children flinched at the movement, but did not retreat. Their story was like some twisted fairy tale--abandoned by their true parents, deprived somehow of their new maman, improbably found by their unknown brother and then lost again. How in God's name had they turned up here, placed in _his_ path at the very moment he had reached the ultimate crossroads?  
  
He could turn aside and still take his chosen path--the step off the balustrade into the waiting river. Then what fate awaited these little ones? Not the same death which had claimed their brother (and sister--God in Heaven, the girl laid out beside him?), who at least might rest in a pauper's grave. If they could not adapt to the day-to-day struggle to survive endured by all the other orphans of the streets, they would die of hunger, unknown, unclaimed, left in the gutter like so much trash.  
  
He had raised himself out of the gutter. Who would do it for them?  
  
 _Look down, Javert...._  
  
For years he had looked down, and had not seen. Not until he looked down at Gavroche's body, and the others, their lives given up for ideals Javert had never understood. Ideas they had believed in as fervently as he believed in the law. For one moment then that belief had been shaken, and justice seemed a poor pitiful thing when compared to so many young lives cut short.  
  
 _Holy God, is there no mercy?_  
  
He was still on his knees, down at the same level as the children, with no idea of how long he had been staring at them. They were huddled against each other, trembling under the intensity of his gaze, the hope in their eyes dying as they began to whimper in fear.  
  
Javert was shaking too, crushed once more under the burden of doubt and despair Valjean had placed upon him in the alley and the terrible brief helplessness he had experienced in the blood-soaked street. He threw his head back, unable to look at those little faces any longer. As he looked up, the clouds parted, obscuring the moon and revealing a swath of dark sky, in which the last of the night's stars still shone.  
  
Something broke inside him then, cracked like the shell of an egg, split apart like the skin of a snake, leaving behind shards and fragments from which emerged something new and unfamiliar, that he could not put a name to. Whatever it was, it took hold of him, taming his thoughts, giving him purpose, showing him a new path.  
  
He never knew, then or later, where the decision had been made--in his head, or in his heart. But once made, it could not be undone.  
  
Slowly, Javert rose to his feet, turning his attention back to the crying boys. Whatever they saw in his face now, it calmed them, even as he said to them, "Be still." He put a hand to their shoulders and set them carefully against one of the wider columns of the parapet. "Wait here." They seemed content to do so, all their trust fully in him.  
  
All he could trust to was the plan which was forming out of nowhere in his brain.  
  
He would wipe himself off the slate, and save his own life, on his own terms.  
  
What Jean Valjean had done, he could do as well--or better. Start a new life, raise _two_ children. He had heard enough stories over the years to be able to spin a plausible tale, had enough resources to forge a new identity.  
  
There was enough time before daybreak to get to his lodgings, retrieve his workman's clothes, gather a few things that would not be missed when he was searched for, and provide a small meal which would not overtax the boys' shrunken bellies. Then they would quit the city--he knew as many ways out as did any fugitives from the law, and he would find a place where they would be safe.  
  
But one other thing must be done.  
  
Javert unbuttoned his coat, methodically removing his notebook and short truncheon from the inner pockets before taking it off. With just one brief pang of regret, he hurled it over the parapet into the churning waters below. Then on a page of his notebook he wrote the words "I have sinned." _That_ would give them something to chew on.  
  
He placed the notebook against a column, weighted down with the truncheon. All the evidence was in place for a non-existent crime. Valjean would have justice, of a sort.  
  
And now Javert would be a law unto himself.  
  
The stars looked down. The sky shifted. In the east there was a pale hint of dawn.  
  
He turned to the children. "Come, mes enfants." He reached out, and they took his hands.  
  
They walked, leaving the darkness and the past behind, towards the light and the future.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration for this came from so many sources, initially reading ideas and meta posted by carmarthen, and comments by so many others in this amaxing fandom. Then a rewatch of _Legally Blonde_ reminded me of the Aristotle quote, which seemed perfectly suited for Javert. I'm pretty sure the Kunitz quote was cited during a recent "Inside the Actors' Studio," by James Lipton to Hugh Jackman. And wow--the sheer volume of fiction by Les Miz fans--I never saw a fandom with so many variations on fix-it fic!
> 
> I tried not to make this Javert too much of a softie...but Russell Crowe's interpretation did touch my heart.


End file.
